Iain MacIntyre: Drafting Dubois on his birthday would be icing on Canucks' cake, too

SAN JOSE, CA - JUNE 06: Top Prospect Pierre-Luc Dubois speaks during media availability for the 2016 NHL Draft Top Prospects prior to Game Four of the 2016 NHL Stanley Cup Final at SAP Center on June 6, 2016 in San Jose, California.

Photograph by: Bruce Bennett
, Vancouver Sun

It is Pierre-Luc Dubois’ 18th birthday on Friday. The Vancouver Canucks should have a present for him. One jersey, size XL, with an empty space on the front to attach a letter one day.

Canuck general manager Jim Benning may be at the centre of Dubois’ party at the National Hockey League entry draft in Buffalo. Since the NHL’s mysterious draft-lottery machine dropped the Canucks to fifth in the batting order from third on April 30, Dubois has often been reported to be Vancouver’s prime target on Friday night.

Benning will tell you with an old scout’s cool dispassion about the 6-3, 200-pound centre’s two-way game. He will praise Dubois’ skating, feistiness and leadership qualities. He will note Dubois’ 99 points and 112 penalty minutes in 62 games this season with Cape Breton of the Quebec League, and the player’s rapid rise and upward trajectory. Benning will even predict for you that the teenager from Sainte-Agathe-des-Mont, about an hour into the mountains north of Montreal, is going to be a superior NHL player.

He just won’t say that he’d like Dubois to play for the Canucks. Benning won’t fully tip his hand. He can’t.

“My old boss Peter Chiarelli picks fourth (for the Edmonton Oilers), and if he finds out who we want, he could use that to his advantage,” Benning said as he once again deflected questions about his wish list.

So this is all conjecture about Dubois then?

Just a wild guess from a lot of people?

Really, Benning doesn’t have to say anything. Dubois checks so many boxes for the Canucks that his suitability for Vancouver at No. 5 is obvious — as long as you believe he can play centre in the NHL.

Partly because the first three picks, Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi, are untouchable, partly because the next tier of prospects consists entirely of Dubois and London Knights winger Matthew Tkachuk and Dubois is the only one of the two who plays centre, rarely has a player and team looked so destined for one another at No. 5 as Dubois and the Canucks.

Dubois would give Vancouver a succession plan down the middle, where first-liner Henrik Sedin is 35 and has two years remaining on his contract.

The uncertainty Friday isn’t so much whether the Canucks would take Dubois, a converted winger, but whether Chiarelli and the Oilers will allow Vancouver to have the top-rated North American skater on NHL Central Scouting’s final list.

Also since April 30, when the Oilers slipped to fourth from second in the lottery, Edmonton has been expected to trade their pick, either moving down in the top-10 or out of it entirely in pursuit of a defenceman, drafted or acquired in trade, rather than throw yet another forward into their leaderless boy band up front.

Yet, here we are in draft week and Chiarelli still holds the fourth pick and may yet choose between Tkachuk or Dubois because if you’re taking the best player at No. 4, it has to be one of them. London defenceman Olli Juolevi is expected to be the first blue-liner selected. He’s another prospect Benning is thought to covet, but he can’t have both Dubois and Juolevi unless he shocks the world and trades Bo Horvat.

“From everything you hear, there’s a lot of uncertainty with that pick,” Benning said of the Oilers’ slot. “But it doesn’t really affect us (because) there are six players we really like, so we know we’re getting one of them at No. 5. If he trades the pick and somebody else picks the guy we wanted at five, then we have other options. No matter what, we’re getting a good player.”

And that may be the only really good player Benning drafts in Buffalo. After surrendering his second-round pick, 33rd overall, to the Florida Panthers last month in the trade for 24-year-old defenceman Erik Gudbranson, Benning won’t make his second pick in Buffalo until the third round on Saturday morning. The Canucks’ third selection doesn’t come until the fifth round.

Benning said he has talked to every GM in the league about acquiring another draft pick or two but has been stymied by a lack of expendable assets. “And I’m not trading Jannik Hansen,” he declared.

After making major deals at his first two Canuck drafts — Ryan Kesler was traded in 2014, Eddie Lack and Kevin Bieksa last year — Benning’s huge move this year was probably the May 25 acquisition of Gudbranson. He surrendered the one valuable, young player he could expend, centre Jared McCann, and a second-round pick he decided he could live without in a draft where the falloff after the opening round is steeper than the last few years.

Benning hasn’t much left with which to construct a significant deal.

“A month ago, it seemed there were defencemen out there in the marketplace,” Benning said. “But when I was talking to teams, it seemed we didn’t have the assets to get their good, young, high-end guys. It was like I was showing up to a gunfight with a slingshot, and other teams had machine guns. I didn’t like giving up that 33rd pick, but to get a top-four defencemen … Gudbranson is going to be a 24-year-old hockey player this year. He’s still going to grow with our young players. It’s not like we gave (Florida) those assets for an older player.”

So it may be quiet for the Canucks in Buffalo this weekend. Or not. The dating period for unrestricted free agents begins Monday, although prize winger Milan Lucic was given permission Wednesday by the Los Angeles Kings to seek his next employer.

Free agency opens on July 1. Benning is motivated and has salary-cap space. How much noise would Lucic or Loui Eriksson make in Vancouver on Canada Day?

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SAN JOSE, CA - JUNE 06: Top Prospect Pierre-Luc Dubois speaks during media availability for the 2016 NHL Draft Top Prospects prior to Game Four of the 2016 NHL Stanley Cup Final at SAP Center on June 6, 2016 in San Jose, California.

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